S4 Ventures

S2S Ventures is a fully student-led VC fund from Switzerland, backed by some of the country's most successful entrepreneurs. We provide student founders with a first check to kickstart their startups and work closely with them to raise their pre-seed round. Our team mirrors the founders we support - students, aspiring investors, and entrepreneurs, eager to drive our fund to new heights.

We are a community-based non-profit initiative from VCs for VCs to push the industry on good ESG. Together with our community of 300 VC funds and 90 LPs from across the globe, we are working to make ESG a standard part of due diligence, portfolio management and internal fund management. Our MissionA comprehensive end-to-end approach: ESG isn’t just a tick-box or reporting exercise. It needs to be embedded into the fabric of both VC funds and portfolio companies. At VentureESG, we develop tools - such as a fit-for-purpose ESG framework - to build internal capacity and knowledge. We focus on all aspects of the value chain from the investment process and Internal fund management to portfolio management and reporting. Multi-stakeholder & community-driven: The core of our community are a set of 250+ VC funds and LPs who bring different perspectives across regions, stages and investment areas. We enable best practice sharing within that community with input from industry experts and academics. Our first-class Academic Advisory Committee challenges us and helps us to include the most relevant and up-to-date insights. A startup & venture-specific framework: VentureESG was born out of the frustration that existing ESG frameworks are not suitable for venture capital. The context of emerging technologies, fast-growing teams, defining new markets and the lack of regulation makes ESG an important part of helping to build better tech. VentureESG is committed to this cause and to prevent ESG-washing from creeping into VC.

The Ventures team invests in early-stage companies, connecting Exor back to its entrepreneurial roots and long history of innovation. The team focuses on discovering exceptional founders who have the ambition to build great companies. Exor offers a unique proposition to the select group of entrepreneurs that it backs: As a fifth-generation family-led business, we have shown we are builders not traders. Our permanent capital allows us to take a long-term view and prioritise the interests of the companies in which we invest. Our global network, across industries and geographies, allows us to bring new opportunities and connections to founders.

We are long-term investors, backing founders at inception and continuing to invest until IPO. We have a single mandate - to help fledgling companies navigate the challenges of building generational businesses.

LvlUp Ventures is an early-stage value-add fund, investing in great teams with strong initial market validation. We don’t just “accelerate” - we “upcelerate" businesses.

We are constantly inspired by relentless founders tackling big problems globally. That's why we decided to professionalize our angel investing side hustle via 10K Ventures - investing our own capital, time, and network as fast and early as possible. Industry agnostic. Geographically opportunistic. Founder-centric. Invested alongside Tiger Global, a16z, Softbank, Alter Global, Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, local VCs and angels, and more. Track Record so far: Invested in 20+ early-stage startups directly **** % IRR*= 67+% 1 Exit 🙌 *Vintage: Q1/2019. Estimates as of Q4/2022. Includes both realized and unrealized returns. Portfolio: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/10kv/recent_investments OUR (HYPO)THESIS*:#1: GOAL: 400X RETURN - We aim for $25k tickets to be $10MM outcomes. We have limited capital but ambitious targets, hence we are astute and disciplined in finding these deals. Each deal we make shall be backed by strong convictions that it could return >400x of our investment. #2: We value Quality and ROI as much as Entry VALUATION. We care about returns and probability of success as much as entry valuations. We acknowledge that serial entrepreneurs or repeat founders could demand a higher valuation in exchange for a “de-risked” premium on team and execution. But at the same time, sometimes the big winners are further driven by external forces. Either way, what we’re looking for is to find opportunities backed by a strong conviction of achieving massive total value creation potential… …which leads us to… #3: We like LARGE TAMs, with Low-PMF-High-Execution Risk type of verticals. We like LARGE TAMs as this indicates how big the revenue potential is going to be (=valuation in the long run). We don’t just mean large top-down hypothetical market sizes, we want to have strong convictions that there is a clear path to a certain scale and we do this through bottom-up calculations and clearly understand what needs to be true in order to reach that level of scale and impact. Our bare minimum is for us to see a clear path to at least $100M Annual Rev RR / ARR potential. Typically, these are category-defining or clear emerging category leaders in a particular geography. Usually identifying and finding solutions to what would be the largest problems in >10 years. You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.― Buckminster Fuller In addition, we also prefer gunning for a high probability of scaling with a low probability of failure - We need to have strong convictions that this works, but simultaneously notoriously difficult enough that only a few could pull it off. #4: For Low-PMF-High-Execution Risk type of verticals, the biggest de-risking element of the equation: The FOUNDERS. We believe that especially since we are focused on investing in Low-PMF-High-Execution risk verticals, ultimately, we hypothesize that it’s all about getting 💯 conviction on the founders. Here are some hypotheses on what we think resonated with us: We prefer problem space-centric and thesis-driven entrepreneurs. They have built strong convictions on the problem space they’re in (as opposed to the solution), which could indicatively mean they don’t give up easily if certain approaches/solutions don’t work. We prefer serial entrepreneurs. All things equal, we have a preference for founders who has experience in building great products and has experienced both wins and losses over their entrepreneurial journey. We prefer the ones who knows how to sell the vision to investors, talent, and partners; and drive and implement their vision to reality (Note: this doesn’t mean we rule out first time founders. Ultimately, what we like to see is strong track record of exceptional capabilities and/or network.) We prefer those with a strong narrative on founder-market fit. Ultimately, we want to back founders who seemingly are born for it. They immediately have the necessary knowledge, network, and most importantly the empathy and commitment to make their vision happen. And how do we attract founders? #5: On Attracting Founders and winning deals - RELEVANCE and REPUTATION are key. It’s hard to pick winning founders, but it's much harder to be picked by winning founders. The top founders and hottest deals are not only difficult to find and catch, they're also 100 times harder to get in and close. As angel investors, we always aim to be part of the cap table to show our commitment and earn the "badge of trust" from the founders. However, achieving this is often even more difficult. To earn our reputation and the trust of the founders, we must hustle our way to provide value-add. This way, we can stand out from the rest and end up being picked. So far, below are the things we think we could add value: NETWORK. We are constantly building from the ground up a strong network of investors, talent, and BD/partnerships in that we can provide strategic INTROS to founders. SIGNALLING. We strive to have a good reputation and maintain a strong track record of picking winners (vs spray-and-pray approach). NOTHING ELSE 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♂️. We try our best to be of value-add, but if there’s no need, we don’t push for it. We’re not superhumans who would know all answers to founders’ questions; we’re just superfans for these founders we’d go the extra mile for them when they’re in need of support.